The Slab

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “Cam!” Kelly shouted when he saw the man. Cam didn’t respond, just kept up his insistent whimpering and continued pitching blindly toward them. “Cam!” Kelly called again, more forcefully.

  This time, Cam stopped short.

  “K-Kelly? I’m…I’m hurt. She…”

  “Where is she?” Kelly swept the area behind Cam with the M-4’s muzzle but saw no sign of her.

  “I don’t…I don’t…she hurt me.”

  Kelly caught up to Cam, put his hands on the man’s arms and stopped him in his tracks. “Let me see,” he said. “Move your hand, Cam.”

  Cam didn’t reply, just whined like a whipped puppy.

  “Move your hand or I’ll break your arm.”

  Cam trembled under Kelly’s touch. The other men crowded around, now, but they didn’t bother Kelly and Cam likely didn’t even know they were there. The eye Kelly could see was wide open but the panic was in it, and panic drove out sight, drove out senses. Panic killed. Kelly had seen it plenty of times. In Nicaragua an American nun who should have known better had panicked when Kelly had been forced to kill some villagers—their heads needed to go up on stakes, as a warning to some who were feeding information to the Sandinistas. She’d panicked and run from Kelly right out into a field she knew perfectly well had been seeded with antipersonnel mines. That nun had vaporized herself, and then Kelly had been forced to deal with two of her Sisters who’d seen the whole thing. Panic killed, and there was no getting around that, and its targets weren’t all that picky and there was no getting around that either.

  Cam, shaking like an aspen in fall, moved his hand away from his face. Where his eyeball should have been there was only a wet, red mess.

  “Oh, Christ,” Kelly heard Vic say, behind him. Then he heard retching. He stayed focused on Cam, though.

  “It was the fork, Kelly. You let her keep the fork and it was the fork, she put the fork in my eye and it hurts, oh God it really hurts, Kelly. It really hurts. The fork, you see what I’m saying, she used the fucking fork—”

  “Okay, Cam,” Kelly interrupted. “You’re hurt but you’ll be okay. We’re going to get you out of here, get you to a doctor, all right? Keep your hand over your eye, like you had it, okay? That’s a good idea. That’s what we’ll do.” He ripped a strip of fabric from his own shirt and folded it into a square, then placed the square under Cam’s hand to help staunch the flow. Cam allowed Kelly to move his hand about, offering no resistance at all. He was in shock, Kelly was sure. He stepped around to Cam’s side, so he could put an arm over the man’s shoulders and guide him the rest of the way out of the canyon. Now he could see Vic, doubled over at the base of the canyon’s wall, wiping his mouth on his arm

  “Vic, pull yourself together,” he said. “We have to move fast. You and Rock come with me.”

  “What about me?” Ray asked. “What do you want me to—”

  “Find the bitch,” Kelly said. “Find her and kill her. She’s in this canyon somewhere.”

  “I can do that,” Ray said. “No problem. I can do that easy.”

  “I know you can,” Kelly replied. “That’s why I picked you.” He’d rather have done it himself, but he couldn’t. When a decision had to be made about what to do with Cam, it was going to have to be the right decision and it would have to be made and executed with quick efficiency. Kelly trusted only himself with that responsibility.

  “When you’re finished come back to the cabin, Ray, and we’ll meet up there.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Kelly,” he said. “I’ll enjoy doing this bitch, after what she done to Cam.”

  “Just remember,” Kelly said. “She has Cam’s gun now. And she’s already demonstrated that she’s dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Ray repeated.

  But Kelly couldn’t help worrying. If he could be in two places at once, he’d feel a lot better about this whole fucking mess.

  ***

  Well, okay, Lucy thought. Water and a gun. Two unexpected bonuses, just like buying Ginsu knives from a TV commercial and getting the vegetable peeler for nothing.

  When she’d realized that only one guy was coming up the canyon she had taken—and that she couldn’t make it back to her hidey-hole in time—she had remembered the fork that had been riding against her ass all day long. She had lain flat against a rock shelf until the guy had come along—she could just see the top of his head, bobbing along as he walked, and she heard him because not only was he not taking pains to be quiet, but he stopped for a water break just before coming into range, so she heard the sounds of the canteen being opened, the glug-glug of him downing the stuff, and then the sounds of the cap going back on. It was bald guy, guayabera shirt guy, not the curly-haired leader she’d been hoping for.

  But one was better than none.

  From her prone position on her stomach, she had started the arc of attack at her hip, and just drove the fork forward with all her might. He hadn’t seen it coming, she was sure—there was no gasp of surprise, no intake of breath, as she’d been expecting. There was only the desert silence, the faint rustle of her jeans against the rock as she struck, and then the shattering of glass and the delicious wet splurting sound as the fork broke through the glasses and sank into his eye. She couldn’t quite see his eye from her vantage point, but that was the target she’d been hoping for. Either an eye itself, or a head wound that would blind him with his own blood.

  In his shock and pain, he’d dropped his rifle and the canteen he’d been guzzling from. As soon as he went scrambling down the canyon, she had silently come to the floor and scooped up those treasures, then taken to the wall again. Now she was ensconced in her hidey-hole, waiting. She drank deep from the canteen and she made sure the safety was off on the gun. If she saw someone’s face, she would shoot. No question about that—the fork in the eye thing had convinced her of her own seriousness, her own resolve, as surely it had convinced her enemies. Though she had always been a determined sort she was not, by nature, a violent woman. But circumstances brought out new sides of people, she was learning. It certainly had for her.

  From her hiding place, Lucy could hear the voices of the men conversing, their tones too low for her to make out the words. At least the guy she’d stabbed had stopped his godawful screaming. The way that had echoed up and down the canyon made her wish she’d managed to kill him with the first blow, or had finished him off with the gun once she had it.

  But that would be suicide, she knew. Leaving him alive was a much better way to go. Leaving him alive but injured meant, she hoped, that they’d split up. At least some of them would take their friend to try to get him medical attention. Maybe others would stay and look for her. But if she’d killed the guy outright, then they’d all stay and look for her, and they wouldn’t rest until they’d killed her.

  She hadn’t thought this through at first—she had struck out of rage and opportunity, and what happened happened. But in retrospect, she thought it had worked out the best way it could. Guayabera guy might still die—she hoped he did. She just wanted him to live long enough to divide the enemy for a while. Divide and conquer, that’s what she’d always heard. She’d just find out if it really worked that way.

  ***

  “Isn’t this Ken’s Bronco?”

  “You worried he’ll smell your perfume?”

  “I saw him today. He bought lunch.”

  “You see him just about every day, don’t you? Man has a major league crush on you.”

  Mindy Sesno sighed. “If he does, he sure hasn’t done anything about it.”

  Billy had picked her up a block from the Shop-R Mart, as he usually did. When she’d seen the Bronco rounding the corner instead of the usual Crown Vic, she’d tried to melt into the wall. But then she realized it was Billy behind the wheel and broke into a relieved grin.

  “You’re better off,” Billy said. “What could that old man do for you that I can’t?”

  “I hear older men are better lovers,” Mindy rep
lied.

  He put a hand on her thigh, squeezing hard enough to leave finger marks in the tender flesh there. “You got any complaints about me?”

  Her laugh was low and throaty when she was aroused, he knew. That’s how it sounded now. “No. No complaints.”

  “So don’t worry about a guy that’s too shy to make a move,” Billy said. “Just be glad you got back-up.”

  Ten minutes later they were at her place. Billy parked the Bronco around back, so it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone passing by, and stepped out. Walking around to her side, his boot slipped in something. “Goddamnit,” he said. “You don’t have a dog, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Mindy laughed. “Why?”

  But when he looked, he saw that it hadn’t been dogshit he’d stepped in, but a wide mushroom, as big around as a saucer. What was left of its head was pale, with red spots, and where he’d torn it open it seemed to seep a thick reddish liquid, like half-coagulated blood.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Ugly fucking mushroom. I stepped right in it.”

  He picked bits of it off his boot and tossed them back onto the gravel yard as she unlocked the kitchen door of her little cottage. “That’s funny,” she said. “It wasn’t there this morning when I left. I didn’t see it, anyway.” She shook her head and opened the door.

  “How long’s it been?” Billy asked, following her inside. “A month? I’ve been so horny for you.”

  Truth was, he’d been half out of his mind with lust since his trip to El Centro and the supposedly free bj down there that had turned out not to be free at all.

  “More like three days,” Mindy said. She unbuttoned the top three buttons of her pink blouse and slipped it off her shoulder, revealing the mark that Billy had left on her collarbone last time. “Your hickey’s still fresh,” she said. “I can’t even wear a tank top.”

  “Not like you ever do,” he said. He reached around from behind her, cupped her small breasts in his hands, and ground his crotch against her rear. He felt her nipples harden beneath his palms. “Sun might get on your precious skin then.”

  “I thought you liked me pale,” she said with a laugh. Her breath was coming harder now, blowing out through her mouth and inhaling deeply. “Rather have skin cancer all over me?”

  “I like you just fine,” Billy said. He continued rubbing her breasts, slipping his hands underneath her blouse now and shoving her bra out of the way. “Right now I’d rather like you naked than with all these clothes on.”

  “That could maybe be arranged,” she said. “But don’t you think we ought to get into the bedroom?”

  He pushed her up against the tile-topped kitchen cabinet. “This’ll do just fine,” he said. “I can’t wait that long.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Ray was glad Kelly had picked him to stay behind. It was pathetic that five grown men couldn’t catch one lone, unarmed woman in platform sandals. But his theory was that it was because they had five men that they were having such a hard time. This Dove was smarter, trickier, and more ruthless than past ones, she had proven that. She was no doubt paying attention. Five men walking raise dust, make noise. One man could move more silently, more discreetly. One man could get the drop on her, where five couldn’t. Ray was convinced of that.

  Ray had never served in the military, though he’d often dreamed of it. But he was small, and he had a heart murmur, and that had kept him from being allowed to serve his country. Anyway, he’d been born just a little too late for Vietnam and a little too early for the Gulf War, so even if he’d been allowed to enlist chances were he wouldn’t have seen action.

  He’d give his left nut to be on the ground in Afghanistan right now, though. Hiking through a canyon just like this, but wearing a uniform with an American flag on his shoulder. Serving with the Rangers, or Delta Force, maybe even the SEALs, though he didn’t think there was much water in Afghanistan so they might be out of their element. He was sure Special Forces were already over there, tracking down Osama, identifying targets for the bombers that were surely on the way, working to win the hearts and minds of the Afghani populace even while plotting to destroy their leaders.

  And if that didn’t work, to level the whole damn country. It wasn’t like it was good for anything. And somebody had to pay for September eleventh. They couldn’t just take aim at the U.S. and expect to survive unscathed. If they weren’t punished, what would stop the next nut with a grievance, and the one after that? These people were just plain evil, and evil had to be dealt with.

  Just like someone had to punish the Dove for what she’d done to Cam. Kelly wanted her dead. Ray thought that was for the best. But he thought about the big hunting knife in its sheath on his belt, with its serrated top edge and razor-like blade, and he thought that before he actually killed her he just might want to have a little fun. No one would ever find her body out here—he’d leave it for the carrion eaters. Some hiker found her bones ten years from now, they’d never be able to tell if her flesh was a little cut up before she died.

  Like wearing a uniform, carving up a human was something Ray had never done, but had dreamed about since childhood. Maybe he’d never get a chance to defend America, but he could at least do something about that other dream.

  He started back up the canyon, rifle at the ready, walking silently. Each step had to be thought through, figured out before his foot touched the ground, so as not to kick up any pebbles or make crunching noises on sticks or sand. It made movement slow, but still, he thought, faster than five guys arguing over which way to go, or how old this or that footprint was. He’d speed up later—his guess was that as soon as she’d forked Cam she’d taken off running, and he’d be able to tell that when he got to the scene of the attack. Until then, though, he would assume that she was still waiting in ambush—only with Cam’s gun this time.

  Ray worked processing sugar, and if that wasn’t boring then boring had never been invented. Once a year, he came out with Kelly and the guys and cut loose—really letting themselves be men for a change, taking what they wanted instead of begging for it like most men did their whole lives. It had taken amazing courage to do this, and the experience had bonded them, made them closer than brothers. No Dove had ever run them such a wild chase, that much was for sure.

  Ray was glad that this one had. Made the whole thing that much more special. And he’d enjoy killing her, once he finally caught her. He had no doubt about that, none at all.

  Yes indeed, he was glad that Kelly had picked him.

  ***

  Ken sat in his office in the dark, eyes shut, face buried in his hands, trying to see.

  He’d been interviewing people up on the Slab, to no apparent effect, when he realized that he was having trouble concentrating on their faces because other images kept trying to force themselves to the forefront of his mind. He couldn’t quite bring those pictures into focus, though—trying to was like watching a TV screen hopelessly clogged with snow, or looking through a sandblasted camera lens.

  Finally he gave up on his interrogations, which weren’t going anywhere to begin with, and drove back to his office, hoping that solitude and silence would allow him to clarify the half-formed images in his head. To a degree, it seemed to be working. The distortion cleared, and for a moment the picture swam into view, floating up from the soup of his own mind. Ken didn’t question the origins of these visions—it was a magic day and touching Hal Shipp’s hand had somehow kicked the magic up into a higher gear than before, so he just accepted that it all stemmed from that.

  The first fractured image had involved hands on a shovel’s handle and a booted foot pushing its head deep into packed earth. Everything was dark, lit occasionally by a flickering circle of light. The hands were vague, almost formless and colorless, just hand-shaped blobs of light. Ken could tell they were hands only because of their position on the handle. He could almost feel the effort of digging, the cold metal of the shovel handle against his palms, the hard rim of the shovel’s head pressing aga
inst the sole of his foot. As he watched the shovel churn up dirt and toss it to the side and return for more, he could tell that this was hard work for someone unaccustomed to physically demanding manual labor, but that the person he couldn’t quite make out—a woman, he was pretty sure, it felt like she was a woman, though he couldn’t see her—was spurred on by anger. Anger, and fear. And not for herself, but for someone else.

  Ken shook his head and slammed his palm on his desktop. Why can’t I see more? he asked himself. Or feel more? Not being able to tell who he was looking at was more frustrating than being up on the Slab, asking questions to which no one knew the answers. This time, the answers were there, in his head, and he couldn’t get at them. He knew the problem was that he was seeing these things through her eyes, so he couldn’t get a look at her face. She was focused on the effort of moving dirt, so that’s what he saw—not who held the flashlight that wobbled off to one side, casting an uneven beam over the dig, not even, yet, what she was digging for.

  Though he had a pretty good idea what that would be anyway. This had all started with a skull in a fire pit, and what better place to find a skull than by digging it up?

  Maybe he just needed to give it more time. Some things couldn’t be rushed, he guessed, and whoever the skull had originally belonged to was certainly in no hurry to get it back. Ken stood and went to the coffee maker to brew a fresh cup, hoping that to focus on mundane tasks might free his mind to make some progress on its own.

  ***

  Lucy Alvarez had grown up around guns.

  Her big brothers both owned guns, as did her father and grandfather. She’d never been a particular fan of them, but neither was she afraid of them. She had fired them, had gone out into the desert with her brothers plinking, shooting at cans and bottles and on one memorable occasion, a wide-screen TV they’d found abandoned in an alleyway. The TV had made wonderful popping sounds and small explosions when they’d hit it.

  Even her husband had owned a couple of guns, though they, in fact, had been a factor in ending the marriage. It still made her heart catch a little to picture Dag. He’d been twenty-seven when they’d met, and she only eighteen, still easily impressed by a deep chest and broad shoulders and bulging arms. Besides a powerful build, Dagoberto Morales had been blessed with an angel’s face. His features were movie-star perfect, right down to the dimples that carved his cheeks when he smiled, revealing even, white teeth. His eyes were dark and soulful and seemed, to Lucy, like the ones that had been under discussion when the phrase “window to the soul” had been coined. They clouded over like a stormy day when he was troubled, shone like the summer sun when he was happy, wept like the winter rain when he felt sorrow. He’d been funny and charming and seemed to have plenty of money to shower on a young lady, and it was no wonder she’d fallen in love with him. The only wonder would have been if she hadn’t.